Heather Bellamy spoke with Ciarán Kelly, the Head of Communications at The Christian Institute, about the implications of the Supreme Court ruling against the Scottish Named Person Scheme.

Ciarán Kelly

Last month five judges of the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the Scottish Government's Named Person Scheme was unlawful. Under the proposals, every child in Scotland was to be assigned a state guardian to monitor their well-being. To find out what all this means and what will happen now, Heather Bellamy spoke with Ciarán Kelly, the Head of Communications at The Christian Institute.

Heather: Could you begin by reminding us what the Named Person Scheme is, or was.

Ciarán: The Named Person Scheme, introduced by the Scottish Government, was to provide a state guardian for every child in Scotland, from the age of zero, so in womb, up to the age of 18. The idea is that this is a person who would provide advice and would engage with families, but in a manner which would go over the heads of parents.

Heather: And what was the Scottish Government's aim with it? Why were they introducing it?

Ciarán: Well, I'm quite sure that the Scottish Government had good intentions in coming up with this law. What they have said, was they are concerned to deal with children's well-being.

When it comes to taking action, which seeks to look after children, no-one's got any objection with that whatsoever. Where our objection to this came, was the fact that it was a universal scheme, so it wasn't targeted in any way. Instead of focussing resources on those who were most vulnerable, it would spread those limited resources in order to capture information on every child in the country, without their knowledge and without the permission of parents, or children.

It was a catch all scheme, which was always going to increase the amount of work that people tasked with looking after children were going to have to do and inevitably would mean that those who were most vulnerable, who most need looking after by the State in some way, were going to get missed.

Heather: Why has the Supreme Court ruled that the scheme is unlawful?

Ciarán: It's quite straightforward. What the Supreme Court has said, is that in putting this law together, the Scottish Government has in fact gone against existing law, in the form of the Data Protection Act.

The Data Protection Act extends to all of the UK, but in passing this legislation, the Scottish Government were essentially saying that those provisions existing in the Data Protection Act could be somehow set aside, or didn't apply. It took the case going to the Supreme Court in order to show the Scottish Government that they can't do that.

The Supreme Court were very clear in saying that the law that you are seeking to bring in, breaches human rights legislation as defined in Article 8 of the European Human Rights Convention.

Heather: Was that just to do with Data Protection? Wasn't there something to do with the right to a private and family life as well?

Ciarán: Yes, you're exactly right. Article 8 talks about protection of the right to a private and family life. The Supreme Court even said that within limits, families have to be left to bring up children in their own way. They went so far as to introduce the spectre of totalitarian states, in saying that what those kind of states try to do, is get at the children first. They said that families need to be left alone and states don't have the right to come in and start telling parents how they should run their families.

Heather: And this was a historic judgement wasn't it?